September 8, 2008

1. The writing wasn't good enough. The speech was even edited out and replaced by a heartbeat in one or two places. You have to have material. Every instant must have content. This felt like a rough draft. You had your basic idea, your narrative arc, and now you need to flesh it out line by line, with lots of funny stuff.

2. The effort to make Obama look good and Palin bad was way too obvious to be effective. In the first video, Lisa Nova was into her character, but here you can see that she's on the other character's side. That made the Palin character much less fun. Meanwhile, the Obama character wasn't any fun either. We were supposed to side with him, but he was just a bland good guy, unfairly treated.

3. The racism theme. Racism is an ugly, heavy subject. To make it funny, you have to do that well, yet Nova was just dumping it on Sarah Palin. We're supposed to sympathize with the unfairly treated Obama, but what we are looking at is Nova's unfair treatment of Palin.

OMG! I haven't laughed out loud over a utubey in a long time! Hilarious! sort of like tailgating and your team has Brett Favre and his clone - I grow so weary of the meaningful pap poured all over us every election

Regarding cancer: “And speaking of Snow White and the seven dwarfs, did anyone read the news? A team of fairy tale researchers has discovered that there were originally eight dwarfs. Yep, that’s right. The eighth dwarf was named “Lumpy” but he died of cancer.

Regarding genocide: “How many military dictators does it take to commit genocide? Give up? Three. One to devise the plan. One to issue the order. And one to dress up like a peasant and flee once justice prevails.”

Regarding racism: “Why did the racist chicken cross the road? To get away from all those dirty, rotten, no good, fucking ducks, that’s why.”

Boring. She resembles Palin but no bite. He has little in Obama's mannerisms or speech.

She could have trapped him in the mens room and challenged his inner man.

The stairwell should have been used to greater effectiveness.

Could have concluded with Mrs O looming at the top in black cape, then swooping down engaging Palin in battle with whining O crouching behind the Mrs.. McCain joins the fray in white cape and arms in casts whacking the O's followed by a smiling Cindy, Todd holding a baby, a shotgun and a bagged moose as they eventually all tumble out the door to a cadre of tv camera with news reporters brandishing headlines denouncning Palin as a stalker and emasculator.

Stairwell used something on the order of the Groucho Marx and the sleeping car episode.

This was close to being very funny. The beginning and end were funny and the ideas pretty creative. But the Palin actress was not very good. She was much too nasty and, as Ann said, too obviously hostile to Palin. I thought the Obama guy was pretty good. He was bland, but that was part of the premise of the comedy. He also did not come across as obviously pro or anti Obama or pro or anti Palin.

This concept has the potential to be pretty funny and, also, probably more potential to be harmful to Obama because he will come across as being beat up by Palin. I assume Lisa Nova is liberal pro-Obama and, from her cacoon, there probably is a fair chance that she does not realize this comedy concept tends to hurt Obama by portraying him as an effete guy who can be pushed around and outsmarted by Palin. But humor is largely in the eye of the beholder. I look forward to more.

The first video had a solid, premise: The Story Behind McCain's Offer To Palin. This is a real event that lends itself to amusing speculation. What is premise of the second video? Palin stalks Obama? Where is the seed of reality that satire can then expand upon? Maybe it would play if she stalked him like a moose.

A better approach would be to stay with the McCain/Palin pairing throughout the series.

1)McCain calls to vet a new rumor which Palin rationalizes away while even more damning events are going on in the background.

The editing in the first video was much snappier and created urgency. The writing was by far superior. Where are the lines like "18 million cracks in the glass ceiling raining shards into the hearts of Americans." or "I left my left nut in Danang."

The actor portraying McCain is the only one with any chops. Keep the story on him and his reactions. Sprinkle Palin in sparingly. And keep the camera rolling until Nova delivers a take that actually sounds like she has her part effectively memorized.

And keep the camera rolling until Nova delivers a take that actually sounds like she has her part effectively memorized.

Woo! That's me whoopin' and hollerin' in agreement. Not only do you Fisk the videos perfectly, but the last piece of advice is perfect.

When Lisa Nova said, "This is the way it's going to go down, John McCain. I'm going to get dress up and pretty, which isn't hard ...FOR ME... and bring this sh*t home", that was hilarious.

At the time she posted that, it was only known that she liked guns, so based on that, Lisa Nova's writing team went ahead and imagined her in reality having more balls than the ex-POW, now calling the shots in the campaign.

Well, it may not be far from the truth -- not in the balls sense, but in that the campaign is now all about her.

I see that Glenn Reynolds is openly asking in his blog, what I asked last week. How is John McCain's ego going to take it?

And after a week, he seems to have a really good grasp on what this lady means to him, politically. They're great together.

I, for one, found this video to be powerful. The question of whether it is laugh-out-loud funny is beside the point. Is the premise contrived? Yes, but the sounds and images are symbolic, not mere caricatures of reality (like lisanova's previous video or the myriad SNL sketches we all await).

The metaphor of Obama being blocked from moving UP the stairs to his destination (becoming president) worked well. Also, the editing (while slightly overdone in spots) captures the nightmarish quality that this election is taking on.

McCain's campaign manager said, "this election is not about issues." At the RNC, sneering, rich, war mongers strode to the pulpit, one after another, uttering ad hominems, lies, folksy platitudes, and fluff; they pandered to the base and posed as agents of change at the same time. This is why Palin, in the video, keeps repeating that the American people don't care about facts. The Republican machine is all form, no content. They lucked out in having an old man who is a war hero running with a superstar female version of Mike Huckabee. Both are very difficult to criticize.

It does not play well for a young black man to get too aggressive picking on sweet ol' grandpa. With Palin, the perception is that Biden is going to have to take it easy on her in the debate, because that won't play well to undecided women. The Democrats are in a catch-22: go on the offensive and risk the perception of the "angry black man" archetype (as the video ends with) along with implicit bewilderment and indignation: "How dare Obama speak ill of grandpa and mom?" Alternatively, Obama could play it straight and go issue by issue, line by line, and show at every point why the country would be better off with his agenda, and he will lose. That's why the video worked so well. In the video, Obama vainly raised a couple of facts about Palin and was either manhandled, shouted down, or kicked in the nuts. Watch the video as if it's a bad dream.